Daybreak Monday 2/15/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Snow and—aargh!—maybe sleet on the way. The high pressure that kept things quiet yesterday and last night is giving way today to an approaching winter storm. We may start seeing snow this morning and almost certainly will this afternoon, though it won't amount to much and before the main event arrives tonight—along with a chance of sleet near daybreak tomorrow as some warm air moves in aloft. High in the upper 20s, down to the lower 20s tonight. And what will all this amount to? As always, we won't really know until it's all down, but the forecast around here is 5"-9"—areas to the north should be getting all snow. Here are the Weather Service storm total forecasts for:

Remember how cold it was Friday morning? Today's daybreak shot comes from Thomas Ames Jr., whose fantastically frost-laced window in Norwich caught the sun just right as it was rising on Friday. Looks like ferns or pine boughs to me, but maybe you see something else in there.Lines, patterns, textures, and S-curves... Plus buildings in snow, a daybreak sun pillar over Mascoma Lake, sledding over at the Hanover golf course, and an irruption of waxwings and horned larks. Winter's kind of a gift to photographers, and Etna's Jim Block made the most of it during the first half of February, which he's collected into a single blog post.“We’re trying to see the silver lining and use this as an opportunity to try new varieties." That's Norah Lake, who runs Norwich's Sweetland Farm, talking to the Valley News's John Lippman about farmers' seed travails as year two of the pandemic approaches. Lake and other farmers have seen varieties they usually plant sell out—though in anticipation, a few got their orders in early. The issue, the big sellers tell Lippman, isn't a seed shortage, but logjams created by unprecedented demand from both farmers and home gardeners.Federal watchdog report on WRJ VA whistleblowers expected soon. The Union Leader's Mark Hayward reports that the US Office of Special Counsel has been looking into complaints brought by four women who worked at the hospital against its now-retired chief anesthesiologist, Dr. Fima Lenkovsky. One of the women, Dr. Jennifer Keller, also an anesthesiologist, filed a separate "whistleblower retaliation" complaint after she was fired. Hayward writes that the OSC has asked the complainants for comments on two drafts of its findings.Valley Flower becomes second WRJ burglary victim...right before Valentines Day. The VN's Anna Merriman reports that owner Morgan Perrone arrived at the store Saturday morning and found glass broken out of the store's front and back doors and her cash register, with $500 inside, gone. This is the first time someone has broken into the popular florist's shop, which opened on Gates Street in 2005. Two days earlier, the owner of Gear Again next door found her front door glass broken and a cash drawer missing. Traffic stops of Black drivers in Hartford, Woodstock, Royalton top region. In the VN, Merriman looks at the numbers in a new study of stops by VT police departments by UVM economics prof Stephanie Seguino. Though the rates in the three towns match the statewide average for percentage of Black drivers pulled over, they stand out compared both to the percentage of Black residents in the towns and to other towns in the Upper Valley, where rates were significantly lower than the statewide average. Former Hartford chief Phil Kasten says the department is looking internally for other disparities, as well.UK variant found in NH. It was just a matter of time, of course, state epidemiologist Benjamin Chan said in a press conference on Friday. The case involves an adult from Hillsborough County who had close contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19 after international travel, reports the AP's Holly Ramer. NH sued for adding landfills without solid waste plan. The suit, brought by the Conservation Law Foundation, challenges the state's permitting of several landfill projects over the past few years, contending they violate a state law requiring an updated solid waste plan every six years. The last one expired in 2009, CLF director Tom Irwin tells NHPR's Annie Ropeik. The suit, Irwin says, is designed to encourage the state to plan ways to "begin reducing the amount of waste it throws away" and to stop taking in out-of-state trash.Vaccine tourism? The phrase popped up after 57,000 out-of-staters showed up in Florida and got vaccinated. As the hoo-hah in NH over second-home owners demonstrates, local don't take kindly to the idea. In the Concord Monitor, Hadley Barndollar looks at the state of play in New England. NH now requires ID with a current New Hampshire address. ME limits vaccines to residents, but leaves enforcement up to clinics. VT reserves vaccines for residents, people who work in the state, and those with a primary healthcare provider there, but has no enforcement mechanism.VT opens vaccines up to those 70 and older tomorrow. That announcement came Friday; starting at 8:15 am tomorrow, people who fit the bill can register online or by phone, or through a federal program being run through Walgreens. Once people 70-74 have gotten their shots, the state will move on to people who are 65 and older, and then to those 16-64 with chronic health conditions. After that, writes Seven Days' Colin Flanders, it's an open question: could be age banding, could be something else. "We're just considering that as we speak," human services secy Mike Smith says."We’ve just discovered that there’s a potential audience out there that is global." There's plenty about the pandemic that's been devastating to the arts, but in an interview with VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen, VT Arts Council director Karen Mittelman finds reasons for hope and optimism. Performers and artists going online have started building an audience beyond the state's borders. The eruption of creativity "out of thin air with so few resources" has showcased the ingenuity of arts orgs around the state. Hundreds of connections have been sparked over Zoom. Times remain tough, she says, but the arts will survive.“Oh, every death is suspicious until proven otherwise." You know Archer Mayor as the author of 31 books about the fictional VT detective Joe Gunther. But he's also a death examiner in Windham County, tasked with looking into deaths that occur outside the medical system. In a wide-ranging profile, he talks to VT Business Mag's Joyce Martel about the business of writing. "I'm not pretending that William Faulkner needs to twist in his grave and think he has a competitor. But I do try to write the best goddamn murder mysteries you'll ever read," he says. "If I wrote something about a homicidal cat-eating child, I could really sell a few books. But that's not what I want to spend my time doing.”  "Just a quiet, peaceful, minute of snow-covered Vermont zen." And you can relax, because you're not doing the driving. Neither was Christen O'Connor, who took this through-the-windshield video of driving along a snow-swathed Canyon Road in Jeffersonville, VT. That's the Grist Mill Covered Bridge you pass through at the end. And from the sublime to the... Kyle Brittain is the Alberta bureau chief for the Canadian weather info channel, the Weather Network. It was even colder out there last week than it was here. So what does an intrepid weather reporter do? Why, what any of us would do, of course: Stick some clothing in the snow, let it freeze solid, and turn it into the Frozen Clothes Band. My tenor jeans are out there chilling even as we speak...

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Chick Corea died last week. He was best known, of course, as a jazz pianist, for Return to Forever and the standards ("Spain," "Armando's Rhumba" among others) he wrote, and as a generous, creative collaborative partner with people like vibraphonist Gary Burton and Herbie Hancock. He was also versatile, not just taking on and recording classical works, but launching an album and touring series with banjoist Béla Fleck, whose tastes are equally eclectic.

It's Fleck noodling solo at first; Corea comes in around the 2:10 mark, and

that's

when things get jumping.

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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Banner by Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                             About Michael

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